Showing posts with label Radio 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Radio 2. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
The CBC: running madly off in all directions
This article appeared in the Feb. 14 2012 edition of the Globe and Mail, and on-line here.
One has to wonder what's going on in the CBC. First, CBC management decimates the Radio 2 audience by making some ill-considered changes to the programming, then runs madly off in all directions by launching digital music channels that only a small percentage of Canadians are likely to listen to. What happened to the concept of serving all Canadians, not just those with high-speed internet connections?
CBC enters digital-music arena
GUY DIXON
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Feb. 13, 2012 6:00PM EST
Last updated Monday, Feb. 13, 2012 6:22PM EST
The CBC has taken a giant new step into the competitive digital-music arena. On Monday, the public broadcaster unveiled CBC Music, a website and mobile app with 40 radio stations covering genres from indie rock to classical. To keep listeners coming back (that all-important “stickiness” in digi-speak), the service also includes create-your-own playlists and selections of songs by young artists such as Toronto’s Austra and Montreal’s Plants and Animals.
It’s not only a bid to attract more listeners, but also opens up “a whole bunch of ways to connect with them that [was] difficult to do on terrestrial radio,” said Chris Boyce, CBC’s executive director of radio and audio.
This comes as broadcasters are increasing their presence in the world of apps: Astral recently launched new mobile apps for its radio stations, with bonuses such as exclusive in-studio performances. Meanwhile, subscription streaming services such as Rdio are once again on the rise, offering users access to massive libraries of streaming music for a fee.
“Gone are the days when people first heard a new track of music on the radio,” Boyce said.The CBC isn’t trying to compete with online music retailers such as Apple’s iTunes, though. Instead, the site links to iTunes. And no, it doesn’t replace CBC’s on-air music. There are currently no plans to eliminate the Radio 2 music station, Boyce said.
The win
The CBC attracts savvy programmers. CBC’s independently spirited Radio 3, for example, brings listeners everything from singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards to local Charlottetown band, Milks and Rectangles. Now that expertise can be applied to a broad spectrum of genres, with streams devoted to Canadian classical composers, some of the best homegrown jazz and alt pop. CBC Music could become a key arbiter of the best, if lesser-heard, music out there.
The miss
It’s still radio: You can’t jump ahead to the next song when listening to a stream. So while CBC Music caters to the new-media crowd, it requires old-media patience. You can jump forward or back while listening to playlists though. (Radio 3 host Lana Gay’s colourful list, including The Gruesome’s garage rocker Hey, is a highlight at the moment). Still, the nascent service only has a precious few playlists so far. And features of individual artists have a grand total of seven acts right now.
The competition
The pay service Rdio gives users access to a huge library of music for a monthly fee. Astral’s free apps are an extension of its stations, with added content such as app-only performances of hot acts. In comparison, CBC Music feels like the CBC – with a wider cross-section of music, unencumbered by the tight programming formats of private radio stations.
The next big thing
Spotify, officially unavailable in Canada, is nevertheless seen as a standard bearer with its personalized playlists (Obama just posted his) and its highly searchable library of artists. CBC Music, by comparison, is more like enhanced radio. Yet some digital radio sites, like American public broadcaster NPR, have taken a sharp direction toward nuanced, esoteric music. The question is whether users will want more breadth or more eclecticism? More searchability or more of a curated radio feel?
What the CBC and the industry knows for sure is that we always want more music.
With files from Steve Ladurantaye
CBC faces budget cuts - but do we care?
This article appeared in the Feb. 12 2012 edition of the Globe and Mail and on-line here.
I find the statement "While vociferous protests would let the government know people value the CBC ..." laughable. Didn't CBC Radio 2 listeners protest against the programming changes that the CBC implemented in 2007? Did the CBC listen to its supporters? No, it didn't. The CBC continued to merrily dig themselves deeper into the hole of irrelevance. And now, former CBC listeners who have abandoned the CBC in droves should rise up a fight for an institution that has betrayed them? I don't think so.
This time, the CBC cuts will be noticeable
KATE TAYLOR
From Monday's Globe and Mail (includes correction)
Published Sunday, Feb. 12, 2012 6:00PM EST
Last updated Monday, Feb. 13, 2012 2:56PM EST
When music critics and public broadcasting analysts gather in a cavernous TV studio in downtown Toronto Monday, they can expect a splashy presentation about a digital music streaming service with no less than 40 channels. But the celebratory tone over the launch of CBC Music might be a bit forced: The public broadcaster is widely predicted to take a 10 per cut to its $1.1-billion grant when the federal budget comes down in late February or early March and moving radio music services online is a way to both save money and generate ad revenue. If Music Canada! is a bouncing new baby,old Radio 2, the CBC’s English-language music channel, looks decidedly sick.
As part of a government-wide belt-tightening process, the CBC was asked last fall to present Ottawa with two possible budget scenarios, cutting five or 10 cent over three years. The broadcaster cannot discuss the contents of those scenarios, but in a recent meeting with The Globe and Mail’s editorial board, CBC CEO Hubert Lacroix made it clear that he considers 10 per cent the most likely possibility. “You’ll notice it,” Lacroix said.
Were it simply made in one place, a $110-million hit to the CBC would eliminate French radio or half of English radio services or remove more than a day’s worth of television programming from CBC-TV every week, said Karen Wirsig, communications co-ordinator at the Canadian Media Guild, the CBC’s main union.
While it is unlikely the CBC will target an entire service in that way, a $110-million cut would force the broadcaster to make visible changes to programming. In the 2000s, with both cuts and inflation eating away at its budget, the CBC streamlined its administration and sold off real estate; to deal with $170-million in lost ad revenue during the 2009 and 2010 recession, it made cuts across the board, eliminating 800 jobs and paying out $40-million in severance. Now, though, the cuts are expected to be vertical – in lower priority areas – rather than horizontal – or across all services. Lacroix calls this a “Sophie’s Choice” for the broadcaster.
That choice will flow from the CBC’s current strategic plan, which emphasizes going digital, putting Canadian content in prime time, and restoring or initiating services to under-served regions: Anything not in that plan is vulnerable, Lacroix has said. That is why many observers expect deep cuts to national radio, which does not fit within those priorities, and especially to music programming, which can be delivered more cheaply online by services such as CBC Music.
The new service will be a beefier version of its French-language equivalent, espace.mu, which Radio-Canada launched last June. Some critics have asked why the CBC is competing with iTunes, but like espace.mu, CBC Music will operate on a broadcast model not a retail one, offering streaming rather than downloads. Still, unlike Espace Musique, its sister radio channel, espace.mu doesn’t have hosts and carries ads, allowing the broadcaster to generate revenue from music programming.
Broadcasting veterans say the CBC is unlikely to axe an entire service, such as Espace Musique or Radio 2. While vociferous protests would let the government know people value the CBC, they would be unlikely to shift the government’s position and might backfire, spewing ill will at the broadcaster itself. Certainly, the abandonment of a radio frequency would seem too great a retreat.
Rather, these services could be cut to the bone, including an elimination of all broadcasts of live performances, with online radio offered as the alternative.
Similarly, the CBC is committed to moving children’s TV programming online, arguing that is where most children watch shows these days. This would allow the broadcaster to rethink morning television schedules, replacing ad-free programming aimed at preschoolers with reruns of adult programming on which there would be ads.
CBC watchers also expect to see fewer special events, such as the multiplatform live coverage of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal’s inauguration of its concert hall last September. And, despite the commitment to under-served regions in the strategic plan, they question whether the broadcaster can really go ahead and open new radio stations in locations such as Kamloops, B.C. and Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. as well as a new digital service in Hamilton.
“There is no more room for efficiency,” said Ian Morrison, spokesman for the public broadcasting lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. “Every dollar is going to come off the air or off the screen.”
With files from Guy Dixon
Monday, March 16, 2009
The CBC: Who cares?
I noticed several articles about the CBC in the National Post and Globe and Mail over the last several days. On Saturday, the National Post carried the article "CBC tunes in to a new reality". Also on Saturday, Jeffrey Simpson's column in the Globe and Mail, entitled "A beleaguered CBC should ask itself: Who cares?". And today, in the Globe and Mail, there was an article about the cancellation of a meeting between the Heritage Minister, James Moore, and the CBC's board of directors.
Now, I'm not sure what prompted this sudden spate of articles on the CBC - I was out of the country for two weeks, so may have missed something - but is seems to have been prompted by the fact that the CBC recently requested an advance on its annual public funding to compensate for falling advertising revenues and the fact that this request was turned down by the Minister of Heritage, Mr. Moore.
Also, it appears that there is some controversy over the decision by the CBC to run more U.S. programming in the evening television schedule, in the hope of attracting a larger audience share and thereby boost advertising revenues. Mr. Moore is quoted in today's Globe and Mail article as having said the following on Tout le Monde en Parle:
"The reason that taxpayers provide a subsidy to the CBC is to give each Canadian, in every part of the country and in both official languages, the opportunity to see [Canadian] news, stories and dramas. Frankly, I can tell you I don't like it when I see the CBC cancelling Canadian content, and we see Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune."
Well said, Mr. Moore.
There are several points raised in the articles mentioned above that I could elaborate upon, but since this blog is primarily concerned with CBC Radio Two (or "CBC Radio 2" as the CBC insists on calling it) I'll focus on Mr. Simpson's column.
I found Mr. Simpson's column so insightful that I've copied it below. Have a look.
A beleaguered CBC should ask itself: Who cares?
Jeffrey Simpson
March 14, 2009
Heritage Minister James Moore rejected more funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. this week. Nothing new in that.
Governments have been saying no to CBC for decades. Why?
This government said no in the context of a stimulus budget that showers money everywhere. The few groups that were ignored - academic and medical researchers, for example - complained. Their complaints echoed in the media and in Parliament.
CBC, by contrast, really didn't complain. It just asked quietly for an advance on next year's allocation, according to news reports. In the meantime, the corporation's board will meet Monday to ponder the impact of declining advertising revenue.
The public broadcaster's ongoing dilemma is clear and painful, its response clear and counterproductive.
CBC's public allocations have been declining for years. Per-capita public funding is about a quarter that of public broadcasters in Britain and Germany and less than half that in France. Only New Zealand supports its state-financed public broadcaster less, according to a study by the Nordicity Group, a consulting firm specializing in broadcasting.
CBC executives argue that between 1995 and 2004, CBC received 9 per cent less government funding, while public money for the arts in general rose by 39 per cent. Said CBC president Hubert Lacroix earlier this year, "the last permanent increase in our basic funding goes back to 1973."
Seven years ago, the government gave CBC a discretionary, yearly sum of $60-million for Canadian programming. The Commons heritage committee recommended a per-capita increase to $40 from $33 in CBC's appropriations, instead of the yearly, discretionary sum. The government ignored the committee.
Presidents, chairpersons and CBC union leaders have exhausted themselves pleading CBC's case to governments of both political stripes over many years - to very little, if any, avail.
After Ottawa climbed out of deficit in the mid-1990s, almost every public policy and institution received more money, except CBC, including under the supposedly tight-fisted Harperites. So a shortage of public money cannot explain CBC's woes.
CBC's defensive answer, given privately of course, is that governments always hate the broadcaster because they don't like its news coverage and think that they can penalize it because CBC is a public agency.
A sliver of truth resides in that observation, but that sliver does not explain why other countries' public broadcasters get more. Nor can the explanation be solely that the Harperites have a special grudge against CBC, as they do, because CBC didn't get much from the Liberals either.
Much more plausible by way of explanation is that in the age of media proliferation, CBC is not nearly distinctive enough, so that increasingly people ask: Who cares? The sound that greets CBC's fate has been resounding silence, including from those whom you might expect to defend it.
Listen to NDP Leader Jack Layton, who likes all things public and has seldom seen a cause for which more public money was not needed.
Said he of more money for CBC: "We'll have to look at any request that comes forward very carefully." In other words, even Mr. Layton isn't willing to go to bat for CBC.
Think of Dean Acheson's memorable quip that "Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role" and apply it to CBC. It has disillusioned core audiences but not found others that really care.
CBC's answer to funding problems has been massive popularization in the search for audience maximization. A deep disdain for intellectualism pervades both English-language television and radio - or what CBC executive Richard Stursberg, quoting a British government white paper, called "worthy" programming.
The result is an ersatz, albeit Canadianized, private broadcaster calling itself a public one. A tiny handful of CBC board members sharply disagree with this direction, but they have been beaten down. The entire management of English CBC believes in the strategic direction and defends it vigorously.
Management changed Radio 2 into an ersatz private network (minus commercials), but has not (as yet) increased audience share. What CBC achieved was to alienate a chunk of its core audience - the one that really cared about CBC - and replace it with another that is only indifferently attached to CBC because so much of the programming is available elsewhere.
The same phenomenon besets television. The Hour, for example, could just as easily be on MuchMusic or CTV. Political commentary apes that of private television, with discussions revolving not around substance but who is winning, what are the political calculations, who is up and who is down - questions that for most viewers evoke the response: Who cares?
As long, therefore, as CBC pursues this strategic direction, it will have the worst of all worlds in the search for public money. It will have alienated core audiences who might have cared enough to fight, and exchanged them for audiences for whom CBC is just one choice among many, and therefore not worth getting excited about.
Mr. Simpson has captured the very essence of what is wrong with the CBC. In attempting to popularize CBC radio in an attempt to capture a larger audience, the CBC has alienated its core audience and ensured that it will become even more difficult for it to convince the government (and taxpayers) to fund it.
Imagine what would have happened in March 2007 if CBC management had issued an appeal to its listeners, telling its loyal audience that it required more funding to maintain its current programming. Imagine if the CBC had put it as bluntly as this: if we don't get more funding from the government, we'll be forced to cancel classical programming on CBC Radio Two, start importing game show programming from the U.S. for evening television broadcasts and will not renew our licensing agreement for the Hockey Night in Canada theme song.
What would have been the result? Why, Canadians would have been up in arms! Letters would have been written to the editors of the national newspapers, to Members of Parliament, to the Minister of Heritage in support of the CBC, demanding increased funding for the CBC! Loyal Radio Two listeners would have donated money to the CBC in response to PBS-style campaigns for donations! There might have even been people marching in the streets in support of increased funding for the CBC!
Well, if you've been reading this blog or paying attention to recent events, you know what happened. Instead, CBC management tried to implement their programming changes without explaining what their overall plans were and without prior announcements making it clear to listeners what was happening until it was too late. First came the March 2007 programming changes. Then - as best I can recall - further changes in the autumn of 2007, finally culminating in the destruction of the CBC Radio Two programming in September 2008.
What was the result? Of course, letters were written to MPs, to the Minister of Heritage, to the newspapers. People started blogs (such as this one) in protest. People marched in the street in protest. But they were not marching in support of the CBC. No, they were writing letters and protesting against the CBC. So the CBC lost one of its most valuable assets in any fight with the government - the support of its listeners, who also happen to be taxpayers and, more importantly, voters.
So Mr. Simpson is correct. Who cares about funding for the CBC now?
Well, I for one care. In fact, I care quite a bit. I resent the fact that I am funding a public corporation with my tax dollars that does not care one whit for my opinion and that seems determined to run itself into oblivion.
The National Post article states that the CBC funding is currently $34.00 per capita. Note that that is not $34.00 per taxpayer, but $34.00 for every man, woman and child currently living in Canada. If you're a taxpayer, how much are you contributing to the CBC?
Just as a quick check on the figures, we can take the 2008 budget for the CBC as $1,115,424,000 and the population of Canada as 33,212,696 (as of July 2008). The per capita funding thus works out as $33.58. So the figure of $34.00 per capita seems to be correct.
However, if we take the labour force participation in Canada (18,245,100) during 2008 as a proxy for the number of taxpayers, then the CBC funding per taxpayer works out as $61.14. (Yes, I know that this does not include retirees and others who are not in the labour force who also pay taxes, but as I said, I'm using the labour force participation rate as a proxy for the number of taxpayers in Canada. If you have a figure for the number of taxpayers in Canada, you can do the calculation yourself and figure out how much each taxpayer is paying.) So you, if you are paying taxes in Canada, paid (on average) approximately $61.14 for the CBC in 2008.
Well, I for one would like my money back.
Now, I'm not sure what prompted this sudden spate of articles on the CBC - I was out of the country for two weeks, so may have missed something - but is seems to have been prompted by the fact that the CBC recently requested an advance on its annual public funding to compensate for falling advertising revenues and the fact that this request was turned down by the Minister of Heritage, Mr. Moore.
Also, it appears that there is some controversy over the decision by the CBC to run more U.S. programming in the evening television schedule, in the hope of attracting a larger audience share and thereby boost advertising revenues. Mr. Moore is quoted in today's Globe and Mail article as having said the following on Tout le Monde en Parle:
"The reason that taxpayers provide a subsidy to the CBC is to give each Canadian, in every part of the country and in both official languages, the opportunity to see [Canadian] news, stories and dramas. Frankly, I can tell you I don't like it when I see the CBC cancelling Canadian content, and we see Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune."
Well said, Mr. Moore.
There are several points raised in the articles mentioned above that I could elaborate upon, but since this blog is primarily concerned with CBC Radio Two (or "CBC Radio 2" as the CBC insists on calling it) I'll focus on Mr. Simpson's column.
I found Mr. Simpson's column so insightful that I've copied it below. Have a look.
A beleaguered CBC should ask itself: Who cares?
Jeffrey Simpson
March 14, 2009
Heritage Minister James Moore rejected more funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. this week. Nothing new in that.
Governments have been saying no to CBC for decades. Why?
This government said no in the context of a stimulus budget that showers money everywhere. The few groups that were ignored - academic and medical researchers, for example - complained. Their complaints echoed in the media and in Parliament.
CBC, by contrast, really didn't complain. It just asked quietly for an advance on next year's allocation, according to news reports. In the meantime, the corporation's board will meet Monday to ponder the impact of declining advertising revenue.
The public broadcaster's ongoing dilemma is clear and painful, its response clear and counterproductive.
CBC's public allocations have been declining for years. Per-capita public funding is about a quarter that of public broadcasters in Britain and Germany and less than half that in France. Only New Zealand supports its state-financed public broadcaster less, according to a study by the Nordicity Group, a consulting firm specializing in broadcasting.
CBC executives argue that between 1995 and 2004, CBC received 9 per cent less government funding, while public money for the arts in general rose by 39 per cent. Said CBC president Hubert Lacroix earlier this year, "the last permanent increase in our basic funding goes back to 1973."
Seven years ago, the government gave CBC a discretionary, yearly sum of $60-million for Canadian programming. The Commons heritage committee recommended a per-capita increase to $40 from $33 in CBC's appropriations, instead of the yearly, discretionary sum. The government ignored the committee.
Presidents, chairpersons and CBC union leaders have exhausted themselves pleading CBC's case to governments of both political stripes over many years - to very little, if any, avail.
After Ottawa climbed out of deficit in the mid-1990s, almost every public policy and institution received more money, except CBC, including under the supposedly tight-fisted Harperites. So a shortage of public money cannot explain CBC's woes.
CBC's defensive answer, given privately of course, is that governments always hate the broadcaster because they don't like its news coverage and think that they can penalize it because CBC is a public agency.
A sliver of truth resides in that observation, but that sliver does not explain why other countries' public broadcasters get more. Nor can the explanation be solely that the Harperites have a special grudge against CBC, as they do, because CBC didn't get much from the Liberals either.
Much more plausible by way of explanation is that in the age of media proliferation, CBC is not nearly distinctive enough, so that increasingly people ask: Who cares? The sound that greets CBC's fate has been resounding silence, including from those whom you might expect to defend it.
Listen to NDP Leader Jack Layton, who likes all things public and has seldom seen a cause for which more public money was not needed.
Said he of more money for CBC: "We'll have to look at any request that comes forward very carefully." In other words, even Mr. Layton isn't willing to go to bat for CBC.
Think of Dean Acheson's memorable quip that "Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role" and apply it to CBC. It has disillusioned core audiences but not found others that really care.
CBC's answer to funding problems has been massive popularization in the search for audience maximization. A deep disdain for intellectualism pervades both English-language television and radio - or what CBC executive Richard Stursberg, quoting a British government white paper, called "worthy" programming.
The result is an ersatz, albeit Canadianized, private broadcaster calling itself a public one. A tiny handful of CBC board members sharply disagree with this direction, but they have been beaten down. The entire management of English CBC believes in the strategic direction and defends it vigorously.
Management changed Radio 2 into an ersatz private network (minus commercials), but has not (as yet) increased audience share. What CBC achieved was to alienate a chunk of its core audience - the one that really cared about CBC - and replace it with another that is only indifferently attached to CBC because so much of the programming is available elsewhere.
The same phenomenon besets television. The Hour, for example, could just as easily be on MuchMusic or CTV. Political commentary apes that of private television, with discussions revolving not around substance but who is winning, what are the political calculations, who is up and who is down - questions that for most viewers evoke the response: Who cares?
As long, therefore, as CBC pursues this strategic direction, it will have the worst of all worlds in the search for public money. It will have alienated core audiences who might have cared enough to fight, and exchanged them for audiences for whom CBC is just one choice among many, and therefore not worth getting excited about.
Mr. Simpson has captured the very essence of what is wrong with the CBC. In attempting to popularize CBC radio in an attempt to capture a larger audience, the CBC has alienated its core audience and ensured that it will become even more difficult for it to convince the government (and taxpayers) to fund it.
Imagine what would have happened in March 2007 if CBC management had issued an appeal to its listeners, telling its loyal audience that it required more funding to maintain its current programming. Imagine if the CBC had put it as bluntly as this: if we don't get more funding from the government, we'll be forced to cancel classical programming on CBC Radio Two, start importing game show programming from the U.S. for evening television broadcasts and will not renew our licensing agreement for the Hockey Night in Canada theme song.
What would have been the result? Why, Canadians would have been up in arms! Letters would have been written to the editors of the national newspapers, to Members of Parliament, to the Minister of Heritage in support of the CBC, demanding increased funding for the CBC! Loyal Radio Two listeners would have donated money to the CBC in response to PBS-style campaigns for donations! There might have even been people marching in the streets in support of increased funding for the CBC!
Well, if you've been reading this blog or paying attention to recent events, you know what happened. Instead, CBC management tried to implement their programming changes without explaining what their overall plans were and without prior announcements making it clear to listeners what was happening until it was too late. First came the March 2007 programming changes. Then - as best I can recall - further changes in the autumn of 2007, finally culminating in the destruction of the CBC Radio Two programming in September 2008.
What was the result? Of course, letters were written to MPs, to the Minister of Heritage, to the newspapers. People started blogs (such as this one) in protest. People marched in the street in protest. But they were not marching in support of the CBC. No, they were writing letters and protesting against the CBC. So the CBC lost one of its most valuable assets in any fight with the government - the support of its listeners, who also happen to be taxpayers and, more importantly, voters.
So Mr. Simpson is correct. Who cares about funding for the CBC now?
Well, I for one care. In fact, I care quite a bit. I resent the fact that I am funding a public corporation with my tax dollars that does not care one whit for my opinion and that seems determined to run itself into oblivion.
The National Post article states that the CBC funding is currently $34.00 per capita. Note that that is not $34.00 per taxpayer, but $34.00 for every man, woman and child currently living in Canada. If you're a taxpayer, how much are you contributing to the CBC?
Just as a quick check on the figures, we can take the 2008 budget for the CBC as $1,115,424,000 and the population of Canada as 33,212,696 (as of July 2008). The per capita funding thus works out as $33.58. So the figure of $34.00 per capita seems to be correct.
However, if we take the labour force participation in Canada (18,245,100) during 2008 as a proxy for the number of taxpayers, then the CBC funding per taxpayer works out as $61.14. (Yes, I know that this does not include retirees and others who are not in the labour force who also pay taxes, but as I said, I'm using the labour force participation rate as a proxy for the number of taxpayers in Canada. If you have a figure for the number of taxpayers in Canada, you can do the calculation yourself and figure out how much each taxpayer is paying.) So you, if you are paying taxes in Canada, paid (on average) approximately $61.14 for the CBC in 2008.
Well, I for one would like my money back.
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